Reordering factor gives different results, depending on which packages are loaded

Solution 1:

This happens because:

1. gmodels imports gdata
2. gdata creates a new method for reorder.factor

Start a clean session. Then:

methods("reorder")
[1] reorder.default*    reorder.dendrogram*

Now load gdata (or load gmodels, which has the same effect):

library(gdata)
methods("reorder")
[1] reorder.default*    reorder.dendrogram* reorder.factor 

Notice there is no masking, since reorder.factor doesn't exist in base

Recreate the problem, but this time explicitly call the different packages:

group = c("C","F","D","B","A","E")
num = c(12,11,7,7,2,1)
data = data.frame(group,num)

The base R version (using reorder.default):

str(transform(data, group=stats:::reorder.default(group,-num)))
'data.frame':   6 obs. of  2 variables:
 $ group: Factor w/ 6 levels "C","F","B","D",..: 1 2 4 3 5 6
  ..- attr(*, "scores")= num [1:6(1d)] -2 -7 -12 -7 -1 -11
  .. ..- attr(*, "dimnames")=List of 1
  .. .. ..$ : chr  "A" "B" "C" "D" ...
 $ num  : num  12 11 7 7 2 1

The gdata version (using reorder.factor):

str(transform(data, group=gdata:::reorder.factor(group,-num)))
'data.frame':   6 obs. of  2 variables:
 $ group: Factor w/ 6 levels "A","B","C","D",..: 3 6 4 2 1 5
 $ num  : num  12 11 7 7 2 1